My goals were:

To burn over 500 Calories in each exercise session. My heart rate monitor tells me how much energy I’ve burnt each session and its an indicator of how hard I’m pushing yourself. To burn 500 calories in an hour session means you’re working at high intensity.

To run around the west basin of Lake Burley Griffin without stopping (15.5km). I’ve run this route once before with my sister and we walked for 50 meters or so at the 14km mark so we wanted to go the whole way without stopping this time.

Here’s how I went with those goals:

I quit half-way into the first round of the Fitness Freaks program. I told myself I couldn’t do it and then ended up reading blogs on my iPhone while sitting on a bike for the rest of the training session while I waited for my sister to finish her workout.

Every training session this week was under 500 calories, I averaged about 350 which was OK, it just meant that I didn’t push myself. I was still taking the comfortable road and not challenging myself. I even skipped Friday’s session altogether…

By the time it got to Saturday morning, when my sister and I were scheduled to run our 15km route, I was feeling quite bi-polar. About 3 times in the car on the way to the lake, we almost turned around and came home. Both of us had bad attitudes about the run and felt we couldn’t do it or didn’t want to do it. When we got there, the apparent temperature was -1.9 degrees (Celsius) and I said, “I can’t do this, it’s too cold, my lungs will hurt, let’s just go home”. My sister wisely answered, “We’re here now, lets just get it over and done with”. So we did and we completed it, knocking 2 minutes or so off our last time. We didn’t stop once!

I felt the Saturday session redeemed me slightly but if I could do Week Nine again, I would. I’ve decided that the physical pain I feel from pushing myself during exercise is so much better than the pain of not achieving my goals. Obviously, there are circumstances in life that we just can’t control and if this stops us from achieving our goals then we shouldn’t feel guilty or beat ourselves up, this kind of negative emotion is not very constructive. However, Week Nine’s shortcomings are purely a result of me being lazy and quitting on myself too soon. I know my body can do it, it’s just getting my head to give my body permission.

Whether you believe it or not, physical exercise, learning to eat well and putting boundaries on these areas of your life is a mental battle like no other. I really don’t know why it’s such a mind game, but I’d be stupid to dismiss the fact that changing your life, developing healthy habits and learning healthy restraint and will power is one of the toughest journeys you’ll ever go on.

One things for sure, if nothing else, the last 9 weeks have taught me a lot about myself and what makes me tick. I also know that if I can finish this, to the best of my ability, which was the initial commitment I made, then I can achieve anything I set my mind to.

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About Kate FreemanKate Freeman is a Registered Nutritionist who is passionate about providing honest, simple nutrition advice and doing it in such a way that inspires and motivates you to make positive lifestyle changes to achieve your health and nutritional goals. She's married with 2 children and live in New South Wales, Australia.

Thanks Kirsty you are sweet. I’m not going to do it again because a part of following the program is that Michelle Bridges says we “start together and finish together”. But the most important thing I think is learning about myself and finding out who I want to be and what I value. xxx